Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
LIAM
Our plan to get rid of Alan falls apart the minute I lay eyes on him.
The plan? Wait for him to come outside to pick up the milk bottles on his step, grab him, and take him to the pinned tarp in the woods behind his house to end him. Clean. Minimum chance of leaving evidence.
Minimum pain.
Minimum revenge.
I’m supposed to snatch him, but the minute my hand closes around his checkered shirt, I’m shoving him back into the house and pinning him against a wall.
‘Liam!’ Kat whisper-yells as she comes in behind me, mask in place. ‘What are you doing?’
I don’t know what I’m doing, but with the way my blood seems to be raging through me, I can’t stop it either.
My fist meets flesh with a crunch that soothes me. The sickening cry Alan gives should pain me; there’s a little part of me deep inside that knows this.
Each punch is driven by guilt. Not for Alan, but for the lies I’m telling Kat.
For the terrified child I’d been the last time I saw this piece of shit man.
For the pressure of the well being discovered if we can’t buy the house.
The worry about disappointing Kat when I have so little to offer her in the way of success.
Smack.
Or money.
Thump.
Or a future.
Crack.
Alan slumps to the floor when Kat grabs my arm. ‘Liam, no. Not like this.’
‘…need this…’ I mumble, shaking free of Kat and grabbing Alan by his collar, dragging him to the kitchen, leaving a trail of red behind him.
Kat steps over the crimson smear, tugging her mask up onto the top of her head. Her expression makes me hesitate. Those sweet blue eyes are stricken.
Then Alan lets out a groan that pulls me right back to him. In the kitchen, I straddle him, my hand on his saggy throat.
‘Do you know what you did?’ I ask him.
‘No,’ he sobs, his face turning puce as he gasps.
‘You wouldn’t recognise me behind the mask. Not now that I’m a man, but I knew you as a boy.’
There it is. The flicker of fear.
‘You’ve got the wrong guy,’ he splutters when I give him a little more air.
‘No. I don’t.’ His cheek crunches when I land another punch. You might not remember me, but I can’t forget you. It’s been what? Fifteen years since I last saw you. Yet the way your lip would curl as you hurt me still haunts my nightmares.’
My knife feels molten in my belt until I pull it out and sink it into flesh. Alan’s scream is cathartic. It washes over my senses and pulls me into unhinged bliss.
‘Liam, please?’ Kat says to my left, but I can’t stop.
The knife plunges again and again, sometimes glancing off bone, other times sinking to the hilt unimpeded.
The bubbling of his blood is mesmerising, and I know I need this.
They wreak havoc on the men who have left a wake of pain and trauma behind them, likely through generations.
Alan’s face contorts, but his screams fall silent. As if the pain is too great to vocalise. The rush of endorphins is almost blinding. My knife is in his stomach when I twist it.
Alan judders and twists until Kat kneels beside him, her knife to his throat and meets my eyes.
‘I want him to feel it,’ I grunt.
‘I know.’
‘He deserves to know how much it hurts to have something stuck into you again and again and again.’
Kat’s eyes grow teary, and I hate the way she’s looking at me. She knows I’m a disappointment. I couldn’t hide it for long enough.
But I’ll get her the house. Our house. And I need to feed the rage to do it. The rage is the only thing that’ll get me through the fight.
Blood spurts around my hand as I dig deep, eviscerating Alan’s insides while holding Kat’s gaze.
‘Please,’ Alan begs.
A tear drips down Kat’s face as she draws her blade swiftly across Alan’s throat.
‘No!’ I toss my knife across the linoleum and stand, pacing the floor as the pulsating in my head increases. ‘Fuck.’
Kat joins me, pushing my mask up and taking my face between her bloodied hands. ‘Come back.’
Her voice is a plea, but I’m too far gone.
‘Liam, please?’
The broken way she says it knocks something inside me.
‘What do you need?’ she asks.
‘You.’
I feed my bloodied hands into her hair and kiss her harshly, pure need driving it. And my girl melds to me, giving in to what I shouldn’t demand.
Not here.
Not like this.
Before I can stop, I’m on my knees, her black trousers around her ankles and my mouth on her cunt. I’ve been addicted since the first taste, and I’ll beg for more until I physically can’t anymore.
Her tears still fall, but her fingers tighten in my hair, knowing that she is the only thing keeping me together. Through the lies. Through the murder.
She’s all I need.
The only one I’ve ever needed.
‘I love you,’ I say between licks and sucks, her sweet flesh pulsating against my tongue.
Her moan rounds off with a sob, and I hate myself for what’s going on with me.
Or maybe I just hate myself.
Seeing her cry is the last thing I want.
I drive my tongue deeper, suck harder, push until she’s quivering against my face.
‘Oh god,’ she whimpers, her thighs trembling. I’m so fucking hard, that I rock my hips, the seam of my zip rubbing against the head of my dick and making me moan.
‘Come for me, baby,’ I demand, before nipping at her lips hard enough to make her squeal. That does it for her; she always needs that bit of pain to fall over the edge. My head swims with tortured pleasure as I grind my hips against the air.
I drink in her wetness, her cunt sliding against my chin as an orgasm rips through her. Using bloodied hands, I pin her to my face and don’t let up until she comes again, the aftershocks of the first wave rolling into the second.
I’m hoping that keeping her sexually satisfied can somehow make up for my failings as a man. And that it might help her forgive me after the fight. If I live.
Kat sharply pulls my hair, forcing me to look up at her, and I lose control, ropes of cum erupting right there in my boxers.
My mouth gapes open as I continue to jerk beneath her, a sickly smile lifting the corner of her mouth. Leaning toward me, she lets a string of saliva fall from her mouth into mine.
Fucking hell.
‘There’s a good boy. Coming back to me now?’
‘Yes,’ I stammer, licking my lip to catch every drop of her spit.
She pulls me to my feet, kissing me deeply before sighing.
‘One: if you ever do that again, I’ll be furious.
Stick to the plan. Two: You coming in your trousers is incredibly hot, and when you get home, you better be ready to do it again.
Three: You better have a plan for cleaning this shithole up. ’
The enormity of that hits as I look around.
Damn it.
Sure, we could take the corpse to the well, but there’s no hiding the mess here. Having them search for a body won’t help.
There’s blood spatter everywhere. My cut knuckles have opened up while raining punches on Alan, which means I’ve probably left DNA all over the fucker.
‘Shit, Kat. I’m so sorry.’
‘What’s done is done. I didn’t like seeing you like that, though.’ She threads her fingers into mine and squeezes. ‘You need to stay with me. To do this together.’
Guilt bites.
‘We clean what we can. Dump a fuckload of bleach. And burn it.’
Kat nods. ‘Like you did with the first one?’
‘Precisely.’
We set to work, but every time I look over, I catch Kat looking at me with an expression I can’t read.
There’s no doubt I’ve just made things worse for us.
I use one of Alan’s bread knives to follow as many of the stab wounds as I can, changing the shape for forensics. We douse the body thoroughly with bleach, in the hopes that it will kill any of my DNA.
Alan doesn’t have much available in the way of accelerants, so we pile cushions, clothes, paper, pillows and anything flammable on the body before setting the pile alight and getting out of there, going through the woods to grab our tarp setup as we pass.
Behind every tree, I swear the shadows of the men we’ve murdered skitter at the edge of my vision.